The invention relates to a distributor arrangement for electrical lines, in particular signal lines or the like, having a housing and a multiplicity of sockets situated on the housing, each having a contact carrier that has two or more electrical contact elements and an angle encoding feature for inserting plugs in an orientation determined by the angular position of the encoding elements, and having a motherboard which is situated in the housing and which has printed conductors to which the electrical contact elements are respectively connected in an electrically conductive manner by means of an electrical connecting element.
The invention further relates to a method for manufacturing such a distributor arrangement.
DE 10 2006 015 718 A1 describes a distributor arrangement having a printed circuit board and multiple contact carriers which are permanently associated with the printed circuit board. The contact carrier provides a multiplicity of contact elements which may be brought in contact with mating contact elements of a plug. The contact carrier also provides a coding groove which corresponds to a coding lug of the associated plug. As a result, the plug can be inserted into the socket in only one angular position which is defined by the position of the coding groove. An angle encoding feature is thus provided. The sockets are located on a housing which accommodates the printed circuit board.
Projecting from the top side of the housing are multiple sockets which may be designed for different types of plugs, for example M8 or M12 socket connectors. Each socket may be oriented in eight different angular orientations, for example. The orientation and fitting of the housing with various types of sockets or contact carrier orientations is performed on a customer-specific basis. In the prior art, the contact elements are directly connected to solder lands of the motherboard. As a result, the motherboard may be individually adapted to the particular fittings for the distributor arrangement.
DE 93 13 896 U1 describes a modular distributor plug array. In the cited document, each printed circuit board is equipped with two three-pole equipment sockets and six microswitches, as well as six HF connections.
DE 200 04 054 U1 describes a sensor-actuator distributor for self-assembly, in which multiple connection slots are provided.